


LAWS 21455A: How To Succeed At The Renaissance Without Even Trying

by jonphaedrus



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: 90 percent of the jokes and references in this fic will only make sense if you go to uchi, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, May/December Relationship, Open Relationships, Polyamory Negotiations, funnily enough i wrote most of this BEFORE i went to uchi, giovanni is an embarrassing jorts dad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-12
Updated: 2017-06-12
Packaged: 2018-11-13 07:48:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11180271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/pseuds/jonphaedrus
Summary: Lorenzo sighed.“Just take your coffee, Giovanni.”





	LAWS 21455A: How To Succeed At The Renaissance Without Even Trying

**Author's Note:**

> this was prompted to me in april of 2016 when my sister was like "hey youve never written a coffeeshop au and youve been wanting to write a giolor fic for like four years" and i was like "you are the fucking devil and i hate you with the burning passion of a thousand fiery suns" 
> 
> so i did it. and it only took a year and a couple of months to write and edit it.
> 
> thanks to [my sister](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chuchisushi/pseuds/chuchisushi) who inspired this hot mess and also did the beta, my goddam school that made me wanna die, and huge huge shoutout to [hyda](Hydala.tumblr.com) who did the eng to ita translations for me and is not only a blessing but is also a fuckening saint
> 
> (thinks about the part during winter quarter and how cold it was) boy i wish that were me

“Buongiorno, Altezza,” Giovanni Auditore leaned over the glass ice cream case and smiled at Lorenzo, showing his teeth. “You are  _ proprio bello _ this morning. Did you get your hair cut?” Lorenzo glared at him, because he couldn’t muster the energy to do anything else. “No, wait...a new shirt? Or perhaps—“

“He’s wearing his glasses, Papino,” Claudia shoved past Giovanni to duck behind the counter, intentionally slapping her father over the head with her purse, the older man smiling beatifically as his perfect hair was mussed. “Quit harassing him.”

“The usual,” Giovanni added, to Lorenzo, who scribbled the man’s order on the cup and breathed a sigh of thanks to Claudia as she brushed past him. “Any more progress on the dissertation?” 

“Three more pages last night,” Lorenzo scowled. He missed the days before he’d finished his JD, when he could just talk about that. Now it was all dissertation, all day and all night. “Why?”

“You should celebrate! Get out of here and the library, see a movie, or something!”

Lorenzo sighed. 

“Just take your coffee, Giovanni.”

 

 

Here was the problem with Giovanni Auditore.

First: once, after Giovanni had heard from Uberto that Lorenzo’s last name was  _ de Medici _ , he had been so amused by the fact that he worked at Café Medici that he’d made the joke the first morning he’d come in for coffee. That  _ never _ started Lorenzo off on the right foot. He’d only been working there three months at the time, but he’d already heard it.

Second: Giovanni flirted with him. Every single time they saw each other. This had included every time Giovanni had stood in for Uberto during a class that Lorenzo was in.

Third: Giovanni was married, and had four children, and, according to every source of gossip around the campus, had slept with at least three other people, one of whom was Lorenzo’s  _ advisor  _ (the other two being the former head of the Divinity School, who was a raging asshole, and the kleptomaniac Criminal Justice professor who kept locking himself out of, and having to break into, his own office).

Fourth: he was really, really disgustingly good looking. Smooth, dark skin with a perpetual golden tan, brown eyes so pale they were almost amber, a beautiful smile with straight white teeth, fine lines, and shoulder-length dark hair with his first few flecks of grey starting to come in at the temples. He wore his shirts a size too small and Lorenzo had never seen him out of a bespoke suit.

Fifth: Lorenzo was about ninety-percent sure (and had gotten confirmation from Lucy, Rebecca, and Shaun) that Giovanni had pheromones, which was categorically unfair.

Sixth: he was  _ fourteen years older than Lorenzo _ .

That hadn’t stopped him.

He still dropped Claudia off every morning to work, flirted with Lorenzo, bought his coffee, and left.

“Don’t let him get to you,” Claudia said, coming over and setting up her register next to Lorenzo as they finished prepping for the morning rush. “He’s just in a good mood today.” 

“If he’s in a good mood today he’s in a good mood _every_ day, Claudia.” Lorenzo tucked an errant curl back behind one ear—he’d had a late night, and had woken up at his third alarm without the time to straighten his hair as much as he usually did.  

“Well, he likes you.” She pursed her lips. “It puts him in a good mood.” Claudia, seventeen, was the third of Giovanni’s children, and the one that Lorenzo got along best with. “He thinks you’re cute.”

“Your father,” Lorenzo said, as archly as he could, “Is a no-good dirty rotten scoundrel.” She grinned. 

“You know, my mother says the same thing all the time.”

 

 

It had started like this: Lorenzo had come to the University of Chicago to get a dual PhD in Political Science and a Juris Doctorate, with his focus being on political law in Renaissance Florence. He’d settled into campus, switched from speaking Italian to English most of the time, and had just been getting comfortable with his job in the States at the Café when Giovanni Auditore had dropped into his life.

Literally.

He’d fallen off of Uberto’s roof.

Uberto Alberti, Lorenzo’s advisor, had apparently been getting his roof repaired by his best friend (Giovanni had, as Lorenzo had later discovered, a wide variety of skills learned during his long, misspent youth.) Lorenzo had been coming up the front path to meet his advisor for the first time off-campus to discuss how to structure his work on the setup for his dissertation, when he would be returning to Florence for research and such, when he’d gotten halfway up the path and Giovanni Auditore had slid off of the roof and landed with a surprised shout in the other man’s front bushes.

He’d popped out moments later, sweaty, with holly leaves in his hair and stuck to his shirt, pushed his bangs out of his face, and looked at Lorenzo like he was the most amazing thing he’d ever seen. Lorenzo had stared at him and thought he was a crazy man. Which was, as it had turned out, not at _all_ an incorrect first impression.  

“Uberto!” Giovanni shouted, and an upstairs window had flipped open, revealing Uberto, looking annoyed. “ _ Mio Dio _ , he is  _ beautiful _ , why didn’t you tell me he was beautiful?”

“Because your ridiculous life is not my problem.” Uberto had snapped back. “ _ Non rovinarmi i cespugli! _ ” 

Lorenzo had hoped at the time that it would be their only meeting; but, as it turned out, Giovanni was actually someone that Lorenzo had to _work_ with, because he was Uberto’s best friend and regularly stepped in to teach for him when Uberto had to travel; and because Giovanni was also at the Divinity School. Not only was he a drop-dead gorgeous bastard with really lovely hair, he was also an international expert on the intricacies of Renaissance church/state law in Tuscany.  

There was no escape. 

At least he wasn’t on Lorenzo’s dissertation committee.

Since then, they had run into each other here and there before Claudia had started working at the Café when she turned fifteen. Now, Lorenzo saw him  _ every goddam weekday morning _ and, sometimes, he wanted to strangle the man.

 

 

“What is this,” Leonardo said, that Friday night, as Lorenzo slumped into their booth at Teodora’s bar, sliding down until he was halfway off the seat and his hair was rucking up the back of his head. “I heard about your defence getting pushed back to the spring?” 

“ _ Non ho voglia di parlarne _ ,” Lorenzo replied, scrubbing his face. Leonardo looked at him, worried—Leonardo was twenty-eight, four years younger than Lorenzo, and he could forgive the man having tenure already (in no less than six departments) because he was a ridiculous, easily-distracted genius. “Uberto doesn’t think I’m ready, and he pointed out that there are some fallacies with my argument about rape legislation from the perspective of the layman versus the perspective of the clergy.”

“That is what he said last year, Lorenzo.” Leonardo sighed dramatically. He and Lorenzo had graduated in the same year—when Lorenzo was twenty-six, and had finished his JD—but he had been teaching for six years, while Lorenzo had been...ramming his head repeatedly against his PhD, TAing for Uberto, and working at the Café. “He keeps putting you off.”

“I trust him,” Lorenzo insisted, even as Leonardo pursed his lips and pushed his hair back behind his ear, long blond strands falling out from under his hat. “Where’s Ezio?” Lorenzo slid back up, fixing his hair as Teodora brought over a beer for him.

“Oh, he’s been trying to drag Machia out of his carrel all day,” Leonardo answered. “Apparently, he hasn’t eaten since breakfast but thinks he’s had a breakthrough.” Niccolò was all of twenty and in his third year of the same dual degree that Lorenzo was, and on-track to finish in one more. Again, Lorenzo didn’t begrudge him (too much) because he was a genius. Not the same kind of genius Leonardo was, but if he’d known two people as smart as Leonardo, he would have given up on ever getting his PhD. 

“ _È uno spreco di tempo!_ ” The door swung open to reveal Niccolò mid-snarl, Ezio shoving him into the bar so fast he almost tripped over his feet. He was clutching several printed pages of his dissertation. “Gilberto was going to bring me dinner whenever he remembered!” 

“Ah, yes,” Ezio drawled, shrugging. “Whenever he remembered, of  _ course _ .” He  shoved Machiavelli over to the booth, making the young man almost trip.

“ _ Fottiti _ ,” Niccolò snapped, and nudged Lorenzo over to sit down, smoothing flat his short hair and fixing his scattered pages. Ezio, perfectly happy, draped himself into the other side of the booth half over the seat and half over Leonardo, who looked positively beatific at the attention. “Lauro, Uberto pushed you back again? You were supposed to defend this time and graduate in December!”

Lorenzo scowled.

Niccolò made a face right back at him.

“Trust me,” Leonardo leaned forward, half-whispering. “He doesn’t want to talk about it.”

“ _ Giuro su Dio  _ he’s trying to keep you from graduating. Lauro, as long as you’re working with Uberto he can take credit for all your research. You have to talk to the Dean about it.”

His temper flared, like hot bile in the back of his throat. “He isn’t like that,” Lorenzo snarled, pushing shaking fingers through his hair, taking a few deep breaths. “Let it alone, Niccolò. I’m fine. I’ll defend in April and graduate with this year’s class, and I like it better that way. It will be easier to get a job, if I’m graduating in the spring.”

“ _Stronzate_.” Niccolò said, shaking his head. He looked to Leonardo and Ezio, who nodded.  

“You should talk to my father,” Ezio pointed out, gently. “He’ll be able to help you, I remember that happened a few years back with Rodrigo, he had to deal with it before they made Haytham Kenway Dean. He can help you figure it out.”

Lorenzo, in a fit of pique, shotgunned his beer.

“I would rather give myself eight-million papercuts on my tongue than ask your father for advice.” Ezio looked chagrined at the reply and leaned back against the booth, arm around Leonardo’s shoulders. “Thank you, but no.” Leonardo, who had been quiet as he chewed over whatever it was he wanted to say, leaned forward and looked at Lorenzo with the most mothering expression.

“I can’t let you do another year like this.” Leonardo reached out, taking Lorenzo’s hand, his blue eyes huge and wet and worried. “You should be teaching in your  _ own right _ or running for office, Lauro. You’re a better politician than any of us could ever hope to be.”

“And someday,” Lorenzo said stiffly, “I will be. For now, I’ll finish my degree.” After  _ ten years _ . “It’s fine. Thank you for worrying.”

 

 

Winter Quarter was always hell. It was Winter Quarter when Lorenzo would wake up and stumble across campus, freezing cold and in absolute anguish, and think of how much he wanted to graduate and return to Firenze, where winters were far more temperate. He would think of the Palazzo della Signoria in June, when the sun warmed the stones, and the waving Tuscan fields around the city, the cool breeze off the Arno.

He hated Winter Quarter. But he hated spring break  _ more _ .

That year, Uberto left for Florence to visit his family, and took with him a list of things Lorenzo needed. Even Leonardo and Ezio left (which they rarely did, giving that they were often with Giovanni for Easter), as Leonardo had been invited to teach some short classes at Oxford, and they had happily traipsed off across the Atlantic. Claudia and Lorenzo worked miserable, cold morning shifts with the wind screaming past the glass doors, and, in the few days available to them, Rebecca went to hit her racing slopes, Lucy went home to visit her family, and Shaun could only be tempted onto campus with the promise of Lorenzo helping him shelve books so he could get a head-start on cleanup for the Spring Quarter. Niccolò barely left his carrel, working feverishly to get his pages together for his reading, the only time Lorenzo ever saw him as a result being when he emerged to eat.

It was on a cold, nasty, windy day at the tail end of spring break that Lorenzo was carting a stack of his books across campus, going to fix his citations to have his finished draft in to Uberto when he got back prior to his defence, when someone shouted behind him. Halfway through turning around to see what the source of the shout was, someone crashed headlong into Lorenzo’s back on his bike, and Lorenzo cried out in surprise and alarm as the hit pushed him sideways and—

He stumbled four steps sideways and fell off of the sidewalk and directly into the duck pond. Fortunately, it wasn’t frozen solid any more, and Lorenzo had a few feet of water to cushion his fall, instead of immediately breaking his legs on the ice.  _ Unfortunately _ , his books went flying out of his arms and six different legal textbooks, full of his notes and tabs, fell directly into the water.

“Sorry, bro!” shouted the kid who had knocked him into the water, and Lorenzo stumbled again as his probably badly-sprained ankle went out from under him and he toppled over the rest of the way into the pond. He flailed desperately—he  _ couldn’t swim _ —and shouted in surprise, breathing in water. He coughed, struggling back upright, spitting water, only to slip on the bottom of the pond.

He would have fallen and cracked his skull if there hadn’t been a massive splash and someone had jerked him upright, one hand smacking him on the back to get him to cough out the water, the other hand tight on his shoulder. Lorenzo spat out three or four mouthfuls of water, and looked at who had picked him up.

It was Giovanni Auditore.

“Cristo,” Coughing, Lorenzo gasped as Giovanni pounded him on the back again, spitting a bit of water and coughing. “Lorenzo, are you all right?”

“I’m—my _notes_ ,” Lorenzo wailed, icy water dripping into his eyelashes. His books were soaked, sinking down into the water, and he shoved past Giovanni, almost tripping on the pond bottom again as he desperately started snatching at his notes. “ _Maledizione, oh maledizione! Fallirò la discussione di sicuro, Uberto non mi promuoverà mai!_ ” Lorenzo was crying as he picked up his papers, and Giovanni caught him, hard, around the chest and picked Lorenzo, soaked through and in his winter clothes, up like he weighed nothing, and set him on the edge of the sidewalk, forcing Lorenzo to look at him. 

“You’re in shock,” Giovanni said, staring Lorenzo dead in the eyes. Lorenzo shivered. “Stay there. Here, take these.” He shoved the first handful of papers he’d grabbed out of the water into Lorenzo’s hands and then went about the pond, gathering up all the books and loose-leaf paper that had come tumbling out of Lorenzo’s arms, stacked them all up into his arms. “Come on.” Sopping, freezing, too in shock even to cry, Lorenzo let Giovanni support him and his badly sprained ankle across campus and up the elevator into the professor’s office, where Giovanni took all the books and papers out of Lorenzo’s arms and then stripped him out of his soaking outer clothes, and hesitated with his hands on the bottom of Lorenzo’s shirt.

“Now?” Lorenzo asked, hysterical with laughter, shaking violently from the cold.

“This isn’t a sex thing,” Giovanni replied, fingers warm against Lorenzo’s cold, clammy skin. “You honestly are going to get sick. Can you take it off yourself? I have a few blankets; you can curl up next to the radiator.”

Giovanni was right, and Lorenzo awkwardly stripped and let the other man bundle him in blankets and plant him next to the radiator, where Lorenzo leaned against the wall in silent anguish. After stripping out of his own wet clothes and changing into an extra pair of trousers, Giovanni spread out all the books and papers and fumbled about in his closet before he dug out a hair dryer and started blow drying things, sitting next to Lorenzo to give him someone to ground against.

“This is a nightmare,” Lorenzo whispered, staring at his books, at what was now  _ years  _ worth of hard work, ruined. His ink was nowhere near waterproof enough for this, and he’d done many of his notations in pencil. The books would be unsalvageable, some of them costing hundreds of dollars, some of them impossible to get other copies of in the States. “This might be all my savings...all this work.” His  _ archive _ , his notes that formed the baseline of his dissertation, gone. Just like that. Vanished. Lorenzo breathed, shaky. “I’ll never pass defence now.”

“You’ll be fine,” Giovanni said in reply, rubbing Lorenzo’s knee gently through the layers of blankets he was wrapped in, not looking up from where he was trying to save the books. “You’ve been prepping this for a decade. You could probably recite half of this from memory. You’re just in shock.” 

“Uberto will  _ never _ let me go in front of committee, not after this. I might know the information so well I could recite it in my  _ sleep _ but that’s different from proving it! Some of my citations needed fixing, this is the  _ end _ , Giovanni. I may as well give up and just finish out the term and go home.” He laughed, a little bit hysterically. “I’ll never get my PhD now.”

Giovanni looked over at him, then, sharp, his mouth a tight frown.

“You should have passed defence five years ago, Lorenzo. If Uberto keeps you from going because of this, I’ll personally wring his neck.”

“Why is it that you and  _ everybody else  _ keep insisting that Uberto is trying to sabotage me? He’s done nothing but support me for the past ten years, even making sure I could still TA after my funding ran out—”

“Because he  _ is _ sabotaging you, Lauro!” Giovanni slammed his hand against the floor, mouth a rictus. “Everyone knows that you were ready to finish years ago and he keeps you on for almost nothing because you’re a  _ better politician  _ than he is! If you leave, he’ll have to actually teach again!”

“Uberto is your best friend—”

“Uberto is destroying your career , and I shall have none of it.” Giovanni snarled, and Lorenzo was shaken for a moment before the older man ran trembling fingers through his hair, looked at Lorenzo with soft anguish in his eyes. “He’s...trying to destroy you, and you’re five hundred times more accomplished than he is. Lorenzo, I have seen you tear people head to heel for far smaller crimes. I just—don’t understand why you cannot see Uberto is doing his best to ruin your  life .”

Lorenzo let out a shaky breath and leaned forward, after a moment, to press his face to the back of Giovann’s bare shoulder, Giovanni’s skin warm against his forehead.

“So say he is sabotaging me,” Lorenzo whispered in Italian, voice low. Like if he didn’t force himself to speak it aloud he wouldn’t have to acknowledge it. “Where is the  _ proof _ , Giovanni? More to the point, what could I do to stop it? What does it matter?” He closed his eyes. It was the shock talking, but more than anything Lorenzo wanted to just...give up.

“Well, it is in the pudding, so to speak.” Giovanni ran a hand down Lorenzo’s back, continued trying to dry his notes. “Some of this can be saved, I’m sure, and you have plenty of it on your computer.” Lauro did—he had backups of his backups of his bibliography and archive. “You should be fine, even with this damage. I’m sure the library can get some things on loan if they have to. So I say, if Uberto comes back and says you have to postpone, that’s a sign. If you don’t postpone and go through  _ anyway _ and he tries to convince you that it is impossible, that is another sign. But, if you want cold hard evidence, well...”

Giovanni trailed off. Lorenzo waited for him to finish.

“If he tries to convince your committee that you shouldn’t pass, that says it all.”

“He  _ never _ would.”

“If you believe that, then see how things go,” Giovanni said, still not forcing Lorenzo to look at him. “And if they go how I expected, then the point has been made for me.”

“ _ Figlio di puttana _ ,” Lorenzo snapped, with little heat. “Fine. If you are so sure that Uberto would jeopardise his entire career just to avoid losing a TA, then I’ll test it. I’ll do as you say.”

“And if I’m right?” 

Lorenzo sighed.

“Then I shall take the misconduct case forward myself, and ruin him utterly. If he’s been intentionally ruining my life, as you all seem to  _ think _ he is, Uberto Alberti will rue the day he was ever born.” Lorenzo hissed between his teeth. “He will never have regretted anything so much as he shall regret having caused me to destroy him.” Giovanni laughed, uncomfortably, and Lorenzo looked up at him to find the older man watching him with a mix of bemusement and absolute terror.

“Remind me,” Giovanni said, “To never, ever get on your bad side, Altezza.”

 

 

Lorenzo had promised Giovanni that he would make his decision based on how things played out, and they did, indeed, play out  _ suspiciously _ like the other man had thought they might. When Uberto returned, he and Lorenzo came very near to having a row about Lorenzo insisting that he would go to defence, and the whole way there it was like pulling teeth. Uberto was worried about his sources, worried that they would want direct references more than he already had in the dissertation, wasn’t sure Lorenzo would be able to stand up to the scrutiny without his paper copies backing him up despite the fact that Lorenzo would fight anybody, anytime, anywhere.

So he went ahead anyway, teeth grit. Stubbornly refusing to give in to Uberto’s pleas that he step back from defence. Ignored the hopeful, worried looks of his friends as they all came back from break, the wringing hands. Ignored even more Giovanni’s pointed stares and worried head-shakes and the near palpable unspoken  _ I told you so _ .

The appointed week came for his dissertation defence, and Lorenzo spent every morning shift at the café dead-eyed and shaking. He spent afternoons sniping at Machiavelli in the department corridor until it reached a point that Gilberto, the kleptomaniac professor, stepped in and point-blank told Lorenzo to stop taking people’s heads off their shoulders.

He slept the final night on Leonardo’s couch, if it could be called  _ sleeping _ . More like, Lorenzo laid awake until five in the morning, at which point Ezio stumbled out of the bedroom, hair sex- and sleep-mussed, and blinked at him where he was lying and wallowing in his misery.

“Come on,” Ezio said, scrubbing his stubbly face. “Let me treat you to coffee.”

 

 

They ended up at the cafè, which hadn’t even opened yet. Claudia let them in without asking and elbowed her brother in the ribs before she served up some kind of monster of a drink for Lorenzo. When he looked at it mute horror, she just shook her head. 

“Don’t ask,” she said, by way of explanation. “You don’t want to know what I put in that.”

He didn’t.

He drank it anyway, grimacing at every sip of sweet, heart-dangerous caffeine levels, and glared vaguely out the front windows at the cloudy pre-dawn street. Ezio and Claudia just let him to himself, and laughed over something their younger brother had said a few days before, shoved food into his hands that he ate without tasting. Before the shop opened, Lorenzo let Ezio grab him by the elbow and tow him out.

He somehow ended up in the department, somehow ended up at the defence room, somehow ended up—with Giovanni holding him by the shoulders, looking up slightly into his face. “Are you going to be all right?” Giovanni asked, voice pitched low, speaking gentle Italian. “You don’t have to do this, if you aren’t ready.”

“I’ve been ready for years,” Lorenzo wanted to say, but what came out was, “You are the one who told me to do it.” Giovanni looked chagrined, and smiled wanly at him, squeezed his shoulders.

“Yes, yes, you’ve made your point.” Lorenzo sighed, inhaled. Closed his eyes for a moment. “Whatever happens in there, Altezza, I want you to know, that I’ll be there no matter what. I’ve had to promise Maria that I won’t punch Uberto, but if you want me to—“

“No, no.” Lorenzo laughed: the first time in days. “No. If anyone will be doing that, I will.” He stepped back from Giovanni’s hold, and folded his hands together around his coffee. “There is no going back, Giovanni, and I don’t intend to go to the executioner afraid.”

“You are a stronger man than I,” Giovanni admitted, and squeezed his shoulder. “You are ready.”

 

 

His memories of the following eight hours consisted of the following:

Being showered in praise by his entire committee for the perfection of his writing, his research. The profuse apologies on the loss of his archive, the discussions of his improvements. Hours and hours of answers, of grilling. Hours of Uberto slamming into conversation about his lack of preparation, about the inability to publish it since he no longer had access to his bibliography aside from the citations put into paper. 

Hours, and hours, and hours.

Hours of Lorenzo, piece by piece, cutting his last remaining mentor relationship apart into tiny shreds and individually before Uberto’s eyes burning every last bridge until nothing remained but smouldering animosity and fetid disgust, burning behind the other man’s eyes.

Say one thing about him, and that was that Lorenzo de Medici, when he did something, did it  _ fucking properly _ or  _ not at all _ .

When the defence finally began to wrap up, it was Gilberto who shut the dossier he’d been reading from and ran a hand through his greying hair. “Well, I don’t know about you,” he said, smiling to himself, studiously  _ not _ looking at where Giovanni was sitting in a corner filing his nails  _ or _ at Uberto, who looked liable to spontaneously combust, “ _ Non trovo alcuna ragione per rigettare questa discussione _ . Lorenzo, your dissertation is far better than some of the published work I’ve read in my day.  _ Dio solo sa _ you’ve spent thrice as long working on the damn thing as you should have. I see absolutely no reason to not pass you with top marks.”

The room was silent. Gilberto, with the absolute nonchalance that only a man who had nothing to fear could muster, pulled out a knife and slowly began to pick under his nails.

“Well, if nobody is offering counter-arguments,” he began, slowly, not glancing up at Uberto and somehow simultaneously pointing it at Uberto, “I believe we can let this talented young man free of our halls, don’t you?”

The silence dragged on thin.

“Yes,” Uberto said at last, “I do believe we can.”

 

 

At the party, five hours later, Lorenzo shotgunned four glasses of champagne, bodily kicked Uberto out of Teodora’s bar, and then, in front of the whole party, grabbed Giovanni by his lapels and kissed him so hard his lip broke and bled, to the sound of Ezio whooping like a fucking catcaller, and grinned the whole damn time.

 

  

The winter had clung on with tooth and nail into late May, and Lorenzo was still wearing his windbreaker and a scarf despite June being less than a week away. The wind was whipping down the Quad when he climbed the steps to the Div School, and he watched out the windows that he passed at the swaying trees.

Giovanni’s office door was open, and Lorenzo knocked on the doorframe as a cursory hello before he entered, hanging his jacket and scarf on the lopsided hat rack by the door. Giovanni was in cut-off shorts and barefoot, but was in a well-pressed white shirt, tailor-cut waistcoat, and the sharpest tie that he’d ever seen from the waist up, tucked into the raggedy jorts. 

“Altezza!” Giovanni grinned, the pen stuck between his teeth jumping upright with his grin as he rocked his chair’s rear legs, rather than put all four of them back onto the ground. “I wasn’t expecting you today!”

“I can tell.” Lorenzo felt like smiling. Giovanni looked ridiculous, but he somehow made it work. “Jorts?”

“They’re Claudia’s,” Giovanni admitted, lifting the papers he had propped on his knees up to show them clearly to Lorenzo. How they fit her father, he almost didn’t want to know. Why he was  _ borrowing  _ them from his daughter, he really didn’t want to know. “Do you like them?” He was ridiculous. Lorenzo strategically chose not to answer that question.

Lorenzo came around the older man’s desk and slid up onto it, hands folded between his knees. “I was coming to tell you I had my tickets. I’ll be leaving two days after graduation.” Giovanni’s expressive, narrow face fell.

“ _ Così presto? _ ” Lorenzo nodded. “Well,” Giovanni straightened his papers and set them down on his desk, spreading comfortably out as they spoke. “I didn’t expect you to stay all that much longer. I hope you’ll let Ezio and Leonardo throw you a party.” Lorenzo didn’t give him a response to that—but he knew that there would be a party, and he wouldn’t be able to get out of it, and maybe they could even get Machia to come. Gilberto had, apparently, given up on removing him from his carrel after he’d literally handcuffed himself to a table in Mansueto and only left when it had closed. He’d picked Mansueto because Gilberto hadn’t been able to talk to him and had just been able to sit across the table and glower at him. “Do you have a job lined up?”

“Chief aide to  _ il sindaco di Firenze _ .” Lorenzo cocked a smile. “I’ll be running for office next year.”

“I didn’t doubt it. I might even come back and vote for you. I’m almost certain I’m still allowed to do that.” Lorenzo laughed, and smiled at Giovanni, who was watching him, amber eyes soft and bright. “Will you be coming back?”

“Sometime,” Lorenzo replied. “We’ll see. I need time away, but I know if I leave you’ll all never hear the end of it.” They both went quiet for a moment, and then Lorezno muttered, “ _ 'fanculo _ ” and leaned forward, grabbed Giovanni’s ridiculous, perfectly-pressed tie, and dragged him forward and up, knocking the front two legs of the older man’s chair back onto the ground, and kissed him.

Giovanni rose up to meet him, hands pressed to the edge of his desk, a quiet, pleased purr low in the back of his throat. As he’d learned the night of his defence, Giovanni kissed like a man drowning, all open-mouthed and sharp teeth and desperation, and Lorenzo let him, nails digging into the side of the older man’s neck. They kissed, Giovanni half-standing out of his chair, until his hands slid up the inside of Lorenzo’s thighs, wrinkling the pressed fabric of his pants.

Lorenzo broke the kiss, breathless, his lips tingling, and looked down at Giovanni. His mouth was bright red and his knife-sharp cheekbones were hot with a flush, showing off the freckles on his dark skin. His eyes practically glowed. “We’re talking about this.” It wasn’t a question. Giovanni, awkwardly, cleared his throat and sank back down into his chair, sprawling back out like he was relaxed despite the desperate tension filling every inch of his body like a twisted spring.

Lorenzo could see his hard-on. He was practically pitching a tent. It was absurd in a man of his age.

“So talk to me,” Giovanni replied, grinning. “It’s about Maria.” Lorenzo raised his eyebrows.

“I won’t help you cheat on your wife.”

“You’re not.” Giovanni laughed. “Altezza, you have seen me.” Giovanni gestured to himself, like that explained it. “I just...love too many people.”

“So you have an open marriage, then?”

“To an extent.” Giovanni looked at the tightness on Lorenzo’s face, and let the false bravado fade. “When I asked her to marry me, she had known me for years. I’ve never been able to stay with anyone. Gilberto and I were together when I married Maria, and she knew that. Being able to just love one person seems...reductive,” Giovanni struggled to pick the right word. “As long as Maria knows, and gives her blessing, we’ve always had an open marriage. And, safe sex, that sort of thing.”

“So then she knows about me?” Lorenzo cocked his eyebrows, and Giovanni burst into a laugh.

“She has known for years! Since the moment I met you,” Giovanni added, softer. “Oh, Lauro, everyone has known. She always wondered if you would come around; she said I’ve never talked of anyone the way I talk of her until I met you.” Lorenzo felt a flush creeping up the pale skin of his neck, and swallowed, tight. “She wants to meet you, so she can see who it is that’s done this to me. Oh, Lauro,  _ ti voglio da sempre. I miei figli non me la faranno mai passare liscia, che tu _ —“

Lorenzo made a choked off noise, and rather than listen to Giovanni keep talking, overwhelming, he slid forward and half onto Giovanni’s lap, overbalancing him back onto the rear legs of his chair as they managed to cram together into it. “ _ Zitto _ !” He laughed, his high cheekbones burning with a flush, and dragged Giovanni up into him, kissing at his lips, at the curve of his jaw. He was as wiry as a fucking skeleton, all hard muscle corded over bone, and after a moment he slid his broad, hot palms under Lorenzo’s thighs and scooped him up, shoved him back onto the desk.

“You’re too tall to do that in my chair,” he muttered into Lorenzo’s lips. “This is why I have a couch.”

Lorenzo paused as Giovanni, with a grunt, hefted him up off of the desk and into the air, held him draped with legs around his waist, and carried him to the couch, his fingers digging bruise-hard into Giovanni’s shoulders. “You,” he paused, “You bought a couch to  _ fuck people _ on?”

“Well, I mean, I bought it to  _ nap _ on, because I am not a young man, Altezza, be realistic and gentle with me—“

Lorenzo didn’t let him finish, just pushed him down flat to the cushions, and put his hand on Giovanni’s dick, hard in his pants, squeezed it sharply through the denim. “Stop talking,” he told the other man, “Just don’t talk, or I’m going to remember how much you annoy me and I’m going to leave.” 

Giovanni was laughing into his mouth until he came.

**Author's Note:**

> twitter and tumblr @jonphaedrus


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